Data skills and courses with Sam McKay from Enterprise DNA

data analysis data analysis um app development and workflow automation automation automation I personally estimate there is probably 10 times that could be done that is not being done right now you know and that's what I think AI will will start enabling just so much more I I am not a believer that anyone's job is in Jeopardy at all if you're particularly if you're a data professional because you can just do five to ten times more like that that is the reality right and um you know

if you Embrace what's coming you have no problem you will have absolutely no no no um no issues at all I'm John rate and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by statsrock welcome to the affiliate bi podcast I've got a special guest here Sam McKay I'm going to pass it over to you Sam because it's like I stumbled upon your Enterprise DNA courses and ironically enough I'm actually spending time looking to find more courses so I can

level up my skills so uh pass it to you and tell us what you do yeah sounds good so good so good so um hey everyone I'm Sam and I have been I founded and and currently CEO of Enterprise DNA we've been around for a while now about seven years I really kick-started things when power bi emerged in its first it's rejuvenated form it had been around a little while but then they repackaged it remarketed it and it was just so much better than what had

been what had gone before and we really for a number of years focused on on power bi um and just the advances in analytics that were occurring at the time you know really showcasing how you could make a big difference within the business World by by using these tools and things have evolved a lot over time and now we are a really dedicated online uh training platform for all data skills and more increasingly AI skills um the obviously you know most the listeners will know that

the world has changed a lot in the last six months um and we're evolving too um we personally and in my team we all believe that you can just do so much more as a data professional and so we're super excited about that and I want to make sure that we bring a lot of others on the journey with us you know mastering these new a lot a lot of new tools and a lot of new ways of uh analyzing and working with data that I

I see coming up now and I just think is going to accelerate into the into the future yeah I think with what you're talking about I'm kind of discovering almost accidentally where you know we started um and a stats data analytics company in affiliate marketing and um I took a course last summer focusing on Tableau and what I saw coming from just the database not even trying to like okay here's my hip hypothesis I'm like I don't know what I'm looking for I'm just going to

throw this together and I was kind of shocked at what I found and I'm pretty sure that you know these tools you've been watching them evolve for a long time especially with power bi so um I think you're right it's uh there's so much to do and there's so much power and then you throw in a GPT and I've already I've already had a sneak peek at some of your courses that have that in there yeah yeah well I personally I personally I um am more

like I was very excited to win power bi came out and I I thought okay okay okay um I I was a historically a very big Excel user I was very very confident in BBA coding Etc and then I saw power beyond I was like wow this is just a big change I'm way more excited now about it the change that's occurring uh with with these AI systems uh than it was even then I just I just think it's truly transformational what are the beliefs I

have which is not you know widely um talked about or accepted I I actually think that the way we work with data is fundamentally change it like it's it's completely changing just like a lot of other things are with with um this natural language interface that we have with technology but um I did I actually am not even convinced that power bi is going to be the winner at the end of this right I I I think there's just going to be a lot of new

tools a lot of new ways that you can just interact with your data have a conversation with your data yes I think these big players are going to be huge no doubt about it but I just think there's going to be a lot more I just think there's going to be new ways of doing things and so yeah I'm just personally getting myself geared up for that and also we're evolving ourselves as a business and as a as a company that creates content for for data

professionals um you know around around that thesis as well yeah I've got kind of like uh like a lot of questions and I'm going to throw the one your way about I think a lot of people get intimidated when they think they have to work with data and I'm sure you've run into people all the time I mean this this exists in all Industries where you're on to someone they've got a pretty competent uh job or profession but then when you kind of like get a

sneak peek at their skills of working with like Excel or you know spreadsheets and you're just wondering like how have you been able to make it this far without having even the basics and it's like I just feel that these are like fundamental fundamental fundamental um skills and then of course these are like kind of like things you build as building blocks to build on top of so uh what would you say for people that want to get started where they're just kind of like deer

in the Headlights look I mean one thing I would just say is it's not that hard and and it's being democratized like crazy like right now like there is no easier point in time through for the last 20 years than there is now to to to to learn and get um get into Data Data once you once you understand a few fundamental Frameworks around data literacy you know what you should be looking for within data it really is just more about tool application because data is

data regarding regardless of like what industry it's in what business function it comes from you know it's a bunch of Dimensions with numbers it's all the same I mean I've dealt in in tens of different Industries with customers on advisory calls Consulting calls training course it's all the same thing there's nothing that different in data and if you can just get familiar with with some of those literacy aspects of of of of data you know what you can do with numeric columns versus what you can

do with filtering and dimension columns it it really comes down to then using the Tool uh the tools like getting familiar with the power bi interface or the Tableau interface or the click view or the Excel you know it's about getting used to the tools um uh and and how you can use them around around the data so so it's really it's really I guess too if you're a complete novice it's about just getting a bit of literacy um which you know doesn't take doesn't take

a huge amount and then it's about tool application and I just you know both of those are being democratized there's no doubt in my mind that um anyone and anyone can achieve this you know I actually estimated a few months ago when I was sort of reevaluating our strategy because I was going to myself wow okay chat GPT can basically you know advise anyone what I would advise them on a training call that we charge a lot of money for but then I realized well there's

probably actually going to be 20 times the amount of analysts now because or data professionals because it's just been democratized so much so you know there's some sort of reassuring thoughts I would say yeah that's a interesting Insight you know in regards to like you know how do we make people analysts but maybe this action might uh maybe it might leave some people in the in the dark where they're too scared to touch chat GPT but maybe it'll do the opposite where people will say hey

I'm not an analyst but help me get started and I think once they realize you know the power in these tools that's when I think people get excited and go wait a minute maybe there's something I can do here I was on a um just to give you that event I was on a call with a a company in um uh some Executives uh whether whether with some with with some analysts as well I think it was about 15 people and the company was from Norway

and they'd all use chat gbt but they said have you used chat gbt in combination with your workflow with power bi power bi power bi and they said no like I think one person put their hand out of 50. I walked them through because I've been using it extensively myself extensively myself um I walked through every part of my development cycle like of developing a singular report and I was able to get assistance at every step along the way that was mind-blowing like absolutely mind-blowing it

would advise me on how to go and connect to the data what transformations to make what model to build what formulas to create we're even to place certain visualizations in my report like report like I you should not be scared of this stuff you should be embracing it I mean I've been doing this for a long time and it used to be what set set me apart but I'm more than comfortable getting some assistance I don't I didn't use it uh just straight copy and paste

but to help me with creativity with inspiration it's it's an incredible um enhancer um enhancer um enhancer yeah it just even hearing about it makes me want to spend more time on it like I've been you know doing uh various data courses over the last little while and then I'm throwing chat GPT on it and then I'm discovering you know some of the courses you have and I'm like okay there's a lot here and I'm discovering new tools of companies that have just come out of

nowhere and they've got these things almost native like I'm like how did they have how did they get this happen uh you know built so quickly yeah yeah well one of the that's the thing that really excites me I just think I mean I've already seen examples like uh maybe some some of the listeners have heard of code interpreter which is a chat TPT plugin uh I've seen some insane examples of where you literally are just connecting data to this thing and you're just typing out

Google like queries to get answers on your data get charts on your data I mean it's like crazy absolutely crazy uh and it is it's so like from that from that just that one you know example and few some some people have access to it I personally don't but don't but don't but just from that one example you can ex you can extrapolate that out and you can think wow okay how we interact with our data it's just it's just going to fundamentally change I mean

we could be in in in um a chat bot a mid like Microsoft teams for example or we could be in um some other in our email maybe in Gmail and you could maybe have a box where you just type in okay can you go and find this Insight from my data which is loaded into the cloud somewhere like to me that is it's gonna happen I I truly think it's going to happen sooner than we think um just based on what I've seen it's not

here right now but I I think it's going to be be here pretty soon that's pretty exciting and you mentioned that you've been doing uh Enterprise DNA for seven years and you know I think you've got a background in finance and based on what you've been doing for your career in data especially you know running uh this business uh what interests and have you seen in people getting more excited about data and uh taking your courses like I'm I'm what I personally seen in the last

couple years companies that do data Maybe in the past they were seen as boring but now they're become exciting and they're becoming sought after and obviously you've even said yourself like the the changes in power bi as as what they've done like these companies have come out of what in my mind I would say they come out of nowhere and now they're like giants like you know Salesforce uh blasts like what 15 billion dollars for Tableau and you know you look at what Microsoft's investing in

and these are just two companies and I I can always find more database tools than what we need yeah uh uh uh it's uh it's uh it's it's been a fascinating Market to to sort of be in like yes my my background wasn't really in these in these tools or or it or or databases before um but but that's very common to most of the the the um um um people that we connect with and partner with and um I I do podcasts with on my

own podcast you know it's it's been such an emerging area that yes there's been a lot of people who have been attracted to it well one of the things I identify I worked in a really large um Investment Management fit one of the largest in the world prior to starting Enterprise DNA and they managed a lot of money like like over a trillion dollars and they weren't that big I was like wow this is like not that many people here considering how big the company was

and when I really um like thought about it deeply the way they went with was with technology well the way they were doing it was with technology and with data and with all the you know the market data the internal data the customer data like they they had incredible systems and it was that sort of Awakening where I was like well this is this is how you can really create a competitive Advantage with with data and this is what um uh was being enabled more so

than ever with tools like power bi and so there was a few things that sort of combined in my own mind as to what I thought was happening and that's why I you know I I kick-started Enterprise DNA um at that time Finance really in reality is just very much it's just data right it's like data flying around everywhere it's Mark it's it's markets prices it's prices it's um it's how you build your portfolios like it's all calculations it's all logic it's all um algorithms and

so you know it was it was quite a seamless transition I I would say I didn't I didn't feel like it was like too far removed from what I was I was doing in the past um like we've talked about like in seven years where data has become boring to like a sexy business uh what what changes have you seen in the last six months where you've just started to launch these uh Ai and chat CPD courses like are you seeing like another like like doubling

over of like you know what's happening in your business and the interest on the course side uh yes and no it's it's it's hard to say um definitely I think there's going to be way more analysts in the future right but but but um from a from a business perspective you know it's becoming easier to learn things right like so um tet gbt is not only good at helping you with data and I think it's going to empower these new tools but it's also helping you

learn a lot easier a lot better right like um you know I sometimes enjoy learning just by asking um the AI and getting its intelligence back you know um back to me so there's new ways of learning which are popping up um and so you know from a from a training perspective you know I think we've got to evolve around that as well you know just having training videos as as is probably not enough you need to have some sort of AI capability some customized learning

Journeys that you augment with AI as well so so we're in the midst of you know trying trying to develop all those sort of things to make sure that um we provide the added value versus you know using some of these more um inexpensive and easily accessible tools now so that's that's one Evolution uh for us uh that we're we're working on um right now but yeah like in in also the other big thing for us um uh is that uh so much is changing in

the tools themselves like power bi is going through this incredible um transformation I mean not a lot of it is released just yet but they had a build conference recently and then they showed a lot of demos of like what's coming and and the whole product is changing and so uh you know we've also got a run in the background we've got it we'll actually Sprint uh to start changing our content over to all these new top features and all these new new ways that you're

going to be able to use the tools so so there's a bit of a transition period there I would say um and also you know we're trying to get in we we believe that um all data Technologies are being democratized so we've put out python courses data science courses SQL courses um and we're going to continue to evolve ourselves uh exponentially around around that as well we might even have some Tableau courses some clip views some looker courses uh we want to be the data everything

everything everything um platform that's uh in this new AI era that um uh that people come and learn from yeah I've been spending a bit of time on looker and it's kind of interesting that you know with Google in the corner you have a lot of people in the SEO industry or affiliate marketing where you know they're just ingrained with Google analytics Google analytics 4 and Google search console and they've been using a Google data Studio previously in setting up these SEO dashboards and now that's

looker they're still using those same tools so it's very interesting that Google's got their own uh kind of corner of the market and I'm spending time on that just mostly because that's one way of getting connected with the the SEO space yeah one of the um one of the other interesting insights that I've had recently as I've as I've been yeah I I quite I've got obviously strategize and I quite deeply think about what is occur what disruption is occurring around me um particularly in the

data space and one of the other insights that I think is happening is that I used to think that that everyone wanted one tool you'd go to one tool and that would be it you would migrate everything to power bi you'd migrate everything to Tableau and my thinking is kind of actually evolved there a little bit because these AIS are going to make it so easy across all these different tools it's just going to become so easy to find Insight I think as a as a

business um big or small you're going to have multiple things you can have multiple ways that you can go and find insights I mean I even know for us like I use Google search console a lot I use my Google analytics a lot I'm there you know every every day or every second day but I also have our power bi reports which are connected to other data and I I just don't think you need to um um um lock yourself into any one vendor I I

think there's just many ways that you can now and you will in the future to find Insight the key is just to get insights is just to get it just get exponentially more insights and I I think that's a strategy for any anyone or any any business going forward yeah I think with a lot of the major database tools I mean I think what you see with a lot of companies is they prefer to use one because either the person in charge is comfortable with that

maybe it's that table or power bi but at the same time I mean these tools uh when you start multiplying them across hundreds of people they don't really become cheap and it just seems like I mean everything in data science and data is is it's not cheap but it it implies that there's value there like the tools are expensive and even when I look at the conferences like these conferences I've never heard of before and I think uh two thousand dollars for a conference price ticket

is considered you know on the low end side foreign foreign foreign yeah I mean honestly um I'm amazed that some of the pricing that some of these companies get away with but um Power bi has always been um the cheapest solution for sure so I've always I've always been um a big proponent of that you know they've always yeah I think they did it they do it to undercut everyone um for for shorts It's Microsoft's like emo emo emo um but in terms of the cost

to Value I've always I've always been impressed by Microsoft's um offering uh you know you could you could get you could do so much with a 10 per month subscription um yes it gets a bit more as you do a bigger deployment but on the whole even for a small business it's a huge value value-add but but the the my feeling is is that is that is that you know they're like getting data like so when you when you when you look at any analytics project

the visualization and the analytics side is just one piece of it right like a a huge part of anything is the engineering it's the architecture of getting the data out of these raw systems and uh these core systems and then getting it all into one place so then analyze it like that that in the whole is where most of the effort actually goes in you know that that in in reality it's where most of the cost actually comes for any um data analytics project as well

and so what I think is going to happen with these AIS right is that they're just going to be embedded into all these core systems right so you can um if you have got some sort of SAS application or you've got some piece of software you'll just be able to start querying the the software you know like you just don't need to go and do all this engineering and so that's kind of like what I think is going to happen right I I just think that's

it already is it's just going to happen more and more and more um as um as these things progress Okay so so this is now going to be a self-serving question where you know I've got a software company that does exactly what you just described where we help people get their data aggregated and I've seen a couple of different database softwares that have these uh kind of prompts where you're able to kind of query and go okay get me this report from that data how would

you advise any company for trying to integrate this is this something they they just basically need to play around chat GPT and kind of go like let's just experiment or would you say like maybe go find a company that's already working with that and kind of go maybe you want to integrate with their framework it's an interesting question I it's such an emerging field that I don't personally have a huge amount of understanding of the underlying like I.T or infrastructure required to do to do it

and I I do I do have a feeling it's going to evolve so much in the next six to six months to a year right um because obviously like the reason I think this is I've seen code interpreter right so code interpreter you literally just load up a file and just start typing away this is a chat GPT plugin so somehow that's being run by some sort of um API like you you you eventually think you'll be able to connect to some API to be able

to do this on your own platform right so I think that's that's going to change where things sit right now I I actually don't know I I don't know where you would go to um or or or how you would do it you know I've seen Microsoft's q a feature for years now and it's never been that good like it's been okay but your underlying structure of your model and your data just needed to be absolutely perfect for this thing to work right yeah but now

it's getting to a point where you can give it sort of dirty data or you can give it you can give these systems you know just raw files right look like with no transformation and it kind of just works it all out for you that's that's what I'm saying so I'm not really I don't really know if I've answered your question that well but I'm I'm caught I kind of feel like there's a massive Evolution coming going on and and things are going to change quickly

so you're just going to be on top of like these new these new things that are that are appearing yeah that's basically going to be my summer is uh testing some of these third-party applications to go what does this look like and a lot of it really comes down to just exporting the data through API or throwing it in a Google sheet and basically loading it up and that's that's an easy you know short-term solution it doesn't solve maybe the you know can I build something

that's kind of more real-time more happening day by day but day but day but um yeah I'll take those notes and say um I've seen both examples and I don't even have that answer either other than I think the only thing you can do is test it and see what works best for your system system system yeah yeah the um to me where the from a from a business opportunity or the who's going to be the winners at the end of this at the end of

the day it's it's who holds the underlying data that that is where those people are going to win because I think the surface layer is just going to rapidly change because of the fundamental change and how we analyze like how the data gets analyzed you you know we might not have to do the analysis ourselves in a lot of cases like we we probably will just be able to prompt raw data and so where that data is is is is the ones who will be able

to monetize or create a competitive advantage and so whether that's whether that's whether that's um you know going to some data Lake from Microsoft or from um uh snowflake or databricks or whether it's a SAS application which holds all the data sales data within within the application or the um the operational data or or whatever you know that that is where because yeah just you're going to be able to plug in this AI to that data and just going to be able to search the whole

thing and just like figure it all out for you you know that that's that's what's already I can already see in a lot of these demos that that are occurring so that that to me is where um where you probably want to be you know we want to probably want to be on the stack the stack I've got another question on you know becoming a data analyst um you know I took a course last summer on data visualization and storytelling with data and I felt the

one thing that's I think it's kind of maybe difficult to kind of teach and train people is how to become a good analyst so we have courses we can learn how to use all the tools but I think it's uh trying to understand that you know what are you looking at or maybe having more skills as an analyst to actually be like I think I can find something if I go over here so how would you kind of um you know build a roadmap for people

to not only become a data analyst but become a good one I just feel that maybe this is uh one of the more lacking skills like we can all learn the tools but I think to become a good data analyst I think that could be the big game changer for you know whether it's your company or working for another company it's I just feel that you know anytime you look at data like especially in my case in affiliate marketing I found a lot of like crazy

things where I'm like I believe I look that my own affiliate marketing data and found holes where I've lost money by not optimizing things and it wasn't until I threw all that data in a database report and kind of was had a mindset of knowing what I wanted to look for that you know those things just kind of came to light yeah it's a it's a good question it's a good one um what I what I think I find uh with most who are just starting

out or wanting to get into this era it's it's actually it's actually just knowing what you can do I mean this is the same with lots of skills right but but but um particularly with data analytics or you know data science yeah same same thing right it's it's it's more so more so just not having the creativity to know what you can go and do you know and so like one of the great things that you can do is you just dive into some reports that

you can find out there online dive into some data science analysis that you can find on kaggle or you can find on various different platforms or read blogs that talk through the analysis that you can do try and build up a catalog of things that you can analyze based on any data right like as I said earlier data is just either sort of numeric fields or Dimensions that you can use as filter filters for calculations you can do on the numeric Fields right like that that

is purely what you do as a data analyst and so just having a you know understanding that you can do basket analysis that you can do forecasting that you can do all of these various different categories of analysis just having a really good mind map within within your within your mind that will give you a lot of good direction on what to focus on next right and that will give you that creativity so that's one part and then you've got to have some sort of tool

application like you've got to have some tool knowledge so that you can go and apply these things and you can build good quality output so so it's really two progress I think that that first stage where you build put up that creative mind isn't it as a data person and then it's about the the implementation the tools that you can that you need to learn to be able to bring it to life yeah I think that really comes down to case studies and then I'm going

to go back to stories which is kind of like my next question which is which is um what's some of the coolest stories you found from analyzing data where something just you know came out when you're looking at you're like oh my God this is an amazing Insight like this is valuable foreign foreign a lot actually a lot um um I'll probably I'll probably do because I work with a lot of demo data so particularly when I'm doing trainings and things like that so I'll just

think about like my own my own my own business right but my interfacing that we do we do a lot of analysis on our on our own business right business right business right um um um you know I've and like we sell subscriptions uh to to our platform and you know we're doing cohort like is this we're a small relatively small business right like we're doing cohort analysis we're doing we're doing um uh um uh customer like um yield per customer you know a life lifetime

value per customer we're looking at all of our churn metrics metrics metrics um we're having a look at uh what our uh results were this month versus last year you know all of these things yeah and we're doing it relatively seamlessly honestly like it's it's not that difficult yes okay I approach things with with sort of a data mindset in a lot of cases but just the ability to be able to do a lot of this at scale even as a smallish business business business um

is empowering you know it can it can really make a difference you know you know I'm out there you know with everyone we talk to showing showing and and telling them how much of a difference data can make and you know we we definitely put into practice you know like we're we're also analyzing our website traffic we're we're analyzing all of our Google metrics our SEO metrics um uh we're analyzing all of our click-through rates on our on our ads like we're analyzing you know so

much and if you think about like even 10 years ago you know how much you could do I mean you could only do probably like a fifth of that um if that if that and I just think it's getting better and better as we've discussed um now like it's just becoming even more democratized which which which lowers the barriers to entry for anyone in in my opinion and what you just described There is almost like one of the biggest problems facing all SAS companies where um

I've you know I work with a lot of different people in the SAS space especially people that kind of Coach SAS companies and they say one of the biggest things that uh these SAS companies don't always do is they don't understand their data so they don't understand their churn rate uh the conversion rate on different parts of the website and it's all those things that you mentioned um there's literally software companies that they're trying to either automate or standardize that I don't think it's easy but

I think a lot of these SAS companies they just kind of don't know where to start and it's one of many problems they have on their plate and going when am I going to have the time to do it and then how am I going to get up to speed and doing it it's probably one of the most valuable things I need to do but I'm starting to read articles that suggest that companies are successful they do this and they either do it or do it

well and ones that become part of the you know the SAS graveyard it's that's part of their failure is um you know not being able to those questions questions oh there's no there's no doubt I mean you just look at the big companies um that that that absolutely like the big tech companies that are crushing it Netflix Amazon Microsoft I mean these guys are just Pros using using data to grow Google you know just like all the tests and um I was even talking to someone

the other day um Expedia do a thousand tests a day and they analyze the data on that or something like it was just yeah this is how you win particularly online where you know the um the competition is huge right like it's it's it's small margins and um having some sort of uh data expertise expertise um uh is is can be the difference it honestly can't but like I get it it's hard it's hard it's hard to put your mental energy into it it's hard to

execute you know it's it's one of 20 things that you're managing as a as a business and trying to grow um so it's it's it's not easy like but you know I I definitely think it's going to get easier which is which is which is very good as we've as we've chatted about about about um but it can make it it can make a difference like I'll give you an example a couple weeks ago um uh we had a quite a low week in sales and

we were running around going why why is this we looked at our promo page we analyzed the conversion rate on our promo page it was it was it was way down way down on what it was um historically changed around sales I went back to normal uh slightly above average the next week and so little things like that right like they can they can honestly make a pretty big difference when you when you um do them in aggregate with lots of other things yeah and in

the affiliate marketing space which is what I've been living and breathing for 20 years like I just kind of look at where we are because I started off in the online gaming space and then now I'm going to all different Industries and affiliate marketing and I'm just kind of shocked that um how some of these companies make so much money and don't actually spend a lot of time on the data side and so just to put it into perspective you know there's a lot of companies

that maybe the top 10 percent have like a bi department where they have not only a budget but uh people that are trained and there's just a lot of Affiliates and uh operators that have an affiliate program and they don't really seem to have an understanding of a lot of these kind of core tools so we have like the tools on the side like power bi but there's there's just like in affiliate marketing there's every tool you could imagine in my mind is a bi tool

like Google analytics and Google search console these are these are data tools um hrefs semrush no problem uh conversion rate optimization like a b split testing and using heat maps I mean you're just going to get so much more data there and what I'm noticing is that there's a lot of companies that you can look at their source code and realize who's using what tool like can I find all the companies using hotjar and when I do these studies I I don't find a lot of

that happening um even what I'm discovering in affiliate marketing are the different types of tracking links you can get and there's certain types that are more advanced like Dynamic variable tracking links and post facts so these links actually can look a lot different and they're they act as signatures so if you actually find the top ranked websites you can actually almost rank them and go who's more advanced because this data actually gives you even more insights as to where that sale came from what part of

your page and you get to cross-reference it with which country and a lot of the status is not always readily available in affiliate programs then I just think the the affiliate marketing industry has so much room to grow like just an affiliate program software software um when I when I mentioned the database course I took it was with Kevin Hart and I showed them a bunch of the the different types of back-ends that I would work in affiliate marketing some of the biggest companies that have

lots of money and I said are you seeing what I'm seeing now that I've taken your course and I have a better understanding of what a good dashboard looks like and the right database you can present and they just said there's so much room to fix here and yeah oh totally uh well you know I I was dwelling on this the other day day day um um um and I and but but between data analysis data analysis um app development and workflow automation automation automation I

personally estimate there is probably 10 times that could be done that is not being done right now you know and that's what I think AI will will start enabling just so much more I I am not a believer that anyone's job is in Jeopardy at all if you're particularly if you're a data professional because you can just do five to ten times more like that that is the reality right and um you know if you Embrace what's coming you have no problem you will have absolutely

no no no um no issues uh at all and yeah you know I I just I think that um there is just so much more that can be done you know there's so much more so like even being a power bi um um like someone who really talks it up it's still quite hard like it's it's not it's not super easy it is you can get to a certain point but to to make it really compelling to to create amazing visualizations you know to to make

sure that you build everything in a best practice way is there's still a little bit to it right it's not it's not the the tool for every every um uh person in the world so you know that becoming easier is just going to make all that other stuff easier you know like the tools we use and the way we we we we connect the data and and um and work with it as that becomes easier we're going to be able to do a lot more it's

going to bring a lot more people into the into the field a lot more people feel empowered you know so all of that is to me really really positive yeah I think aside from uh you know the popularity from like your own set of courses like I'm I'm part of a program that works with the you know universities in mostly Canada and this program is available in Canada and states and there's many of these programs and basically I I can pause these internship job posts and

I have one for SEO sales I've got a couple other ones and then I have one on data analytics and this one just gets flooded it is just constant applications I'm like I don't even have time to check these because there's just too many applications I have professors they're like do you please have a project like they really want a project to work on and you know train their students so it's that's an interesting well a question for you how is a you know because I

I agree I see that everywhere and you know as as we've as we've chatted about I think it's just going to be even bigger it's going to be a bigger movement um towards towards this area um um um how do you know how do we as a business um leverage that and find more of these customers quicker and and um and earlier on in their Journey that's a good question and I almost want to answer that by saying you know let's send them to your courses

because I mean the demand for people that want to get educated in educated in um data analysts data analytics business intelligence I mean it's just going through the roof right now and they're trying to get their hands on any course they can find uh I mean they'll go straight to Youtube but these courses they're basically a lot of them are post-secondary education like college or university some of them are very short like um you know six weeks um it's just the demands there and the reason

why I wanted to even start this podcast in the first place was I believe that the affiliate marketing industry is not as advanced as it could be and what you said previously about you know you believe that things could be multiplied by a factor of ten uh whether you're exaggerating or maybe you're you're at like a six I I firmly believe that affiliate marketing could double over in a shorter period of time where when you start looking at Industries like business intelligence like I think I

saw something that said it's worth around 30 billion right now and it's it's got you know you go to statistica and you've got the projections of how much it's going to grow I think this is intelligence is going to touch so many things like you apply business intelligence and have it intersect an affiliate marketing industry that's worth around 20 billion and I just believe that this aspect of bi is going to amplify this and this is just only one example I mean the fact that we

can actually build better tools for affiliate marketers such that they can analyze their data like I'll give you my my data story from last summer when I took that database course I started plotting uh clicks versus Revenue which were campaigns tracking links I had one tracking link that sent users to the exact same offer but the offer was a different landing page they're visually slightly different but they they had the same offer one converted by a factor five and it had enough clicks that I'm like

I'm pretty confident that I did not need to wait two years to realize that I lost 30 to 40 000 I probably could have reacted in a span of maybe two months of data being that's plenty of data for me to know that the confidence rate of this data being accurate is there and um that that blew me away of just looking at my data was like First crying a little bit and then after it's going this is what we're doing as a company like we're

building these tools and what I got excited about even you know wanting to set up this podcast was to kind of shed a light on all the different things how there's different tools or courses that can all come back to affiliate marketing and these are just they're massive Industries on their own but I mean when we look at just the bubble of business intelligence it's touching everything you know it's touching Logistics it's touching shopping I mean it's e-commerce it's education it's uh probably like you know

even even even Health you know personal wealthism finance I mean we basically just list everything and it's uh it's going to have an application and not just an application uh we're probably going to have better uh models of how much we believe things are going to improve by yeah yeah I mean all really good really good thoughts and points um I like I I don't believe that the the ten times there's an exaggeration when you when you put it into the analysis you could do the

apps you could build and the automations that you could build off the back of um of a lot of this because you've got to remember that data has been exponentially growing just the amount of data that you have as a business like we're we're an online business we're not we're not we're not a big company by any means right we're just a a small to medium-sized business um but I just think about the data that we churn out that we don't really have and like we

don't have that much analytics around like I at the moment I don't know exactly the data's probably somewhere but or maybe it is maybe it isn't I don't know exactly what each individual user is doing on our platform at each time they come to the platform right I I have a little bit of an idea based on some events that we track but not a full idea and just think about it think about how much more we could we could know if we we could drill

down into that individual person then we could customize all of the and automate all of the messaging and the learning plan for that individual person so so I don't I actually don't think it's that big an exaggeration when you factor in all those different categories like it probably is an underestimating underestimate underestimate underestimating it because you you just think across this for every business how Healthcare entertainment Finance you know just totally customize to you and that person think about you know as as as a as

a business servicing all of these these customers you you want to get down to that level right like that that's going to make you the most money but also add the most value to your customers like to me you know that's that's where things are going like there's just no doubt about it so it's it's not it doesn't feel that too like too far removed from reality that sort of estimation yeah I forget what the term for that is I don't know if it's like micro

personalization but it's something to do with like personalization with marketing and I think you're right I mean the the data itself speaks for itself like when you're able to personalize on any type of level it's you rarely have someone say yeah that didn't work out actually was a step back it's um that aspect of business on its own I mean I could apply that all day long in my business and be that's one of you know many you know data studies or tests I'm going to

start doing and it's like you know where do you stop you just keep going until you keep finding these uh holes to fill and maybe rather than pulls the fill you know they're basically you know incrementally amplifying your business yeah I mean we want to go and and I I sort of made this announcement a few months back I said I want to infuse Ai and so all parts of the the data learning um experience and so it's not it doesn't happen overnight but I would

I would love to get to a point where someone signs up to our platform and we are tracking them learning every like we we build a plan based on their own goals based on their own outcomes their time frames and then we help them get there with personalized AI messaging um and AI learning uh to that individual through time you know through if they if they take a course we send them an email saying well done you know here's a here's a recommendation you know here's

what you learned uh here's what we think you based on the quiz um the the test that you took the answers you didn't go right here's what we should you should focus on you know just total personalization like that's where I wanna I wanna definitely take things and that's how that's our ambition um but yeah you know this it doesn't it certainly doesn't happen like uh with a click of the fingers you gotta yeah there's a there's a strong you know there's a timely Evolution to

make that actually happen yeah and I think there's actually more uh companies that are building elements of that I know with companies like Char they do you know recordings of your users but I think they've got a feature where they can actually hide sensitive data so in our app we have sensitive data that we don't want to see but we definitely want to know what our users are doing and the habits and you know again there's just like another Rabbit Hole of going well how do

you um you know make you know using the app or habitual where it becomes like habit developing and once you start once you're able to achieve it achieve it achieve it um one you get success with your user but then you're kind of like well what is does what does it look like to actually build a habit journey and you know the whole gamification and you know I think I think we're gonna we will have tools so whether you build them in-house um if you don't

I'm pretty sure in the next six months you're at least going to find one company that will do a lot of these things for you yeah well a lot of this has just really been the capabilities of the big firms hasn't it like um Netflix already kind of does this yeah YouTube already kind of does it like I was you know I get emails from Netflix every second day saying oh did you finish you didn't finish this video um here's a here's a recommendation based on

the last two videos uh two shows that you watch like so you know they're already doing it but hopefully there's just going to be a continued democratization of that for all for all companies and all businesses so it's going to take internal investment and Innovation but also hopefully there'll be external things that you can plug into that can help supercharge it supercharge it I'm gonna wrap this up with a question that I like to ask everyone which is you know you've already touched on it and

I know you have an affiliate program with your site so what do you see as the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects uh business intelligence it's a good one you know um one thing we've gone through a few iterations with our affiliate marketing um our latest iteration is by far the best you know we've got a really good setup and a really good a lot of good automations and a good uh good way to build build a really solid Network and build build relationships um

around around Affiliates uh specifically so so we're we're in a much better place than we ever have have been there but you know what I think I think that personal recommendations and strategic affiliate program are becoming more important like almost far more important right um you know and and I would put in sort of like influence a relationship I mean it's basically the same thing right like you know other people recommending you um um um if you have a look at what's happening to someone like

like Google and Bing and like some of these other tools where you traditionally have got a lot of traffic some of that might be in Jeff like there's a lot up in the air there isn't it like who knows how much search traffic is going to be through generative AI like it's just going to get get get um um um um things through through what um the AIS put out right so having that personal recommendation I I just think is probably getting way way more important

as a as a way to acquire customers than it ever has um ever has before so I don't know what do you think that's an interesting answer and I'm actually going to send that answer to another guest that I had who um Alan Storm from intolytics and uh I asked them a similar question of like you know can you do like you know an attribution model where you you put a bit a basic field so in the B2B space there's a lot of talk in the

B2B marketing World about having a self-attribution where self-attribution is kind of like well what is someone going to write in that field they're going to be how did I find you well my friend Melissa sent me a referral it's like okay well what does that look like in data Allen believed that you know it was kind of tough to do that across Millions like if you're processing like millions of sales per day then gets kind of difficult but I think with what you're saying is that

and this is what I believe to be true as well is that even if you have a lot of uh raw data you're still going to be able to find a way to put it through a machine and go build take the take the status and put some insights on it so I think you have affiliate marketing the mindset for most people is that personalization doesn't exist because we're doing this all on scale and I think what you're saying I actually believe there's a lot of

Truth in it where you know we can't always cater to the one-on-one you know with like a person to person but I think having that mentality of going well what does it what would it look like if we were to do it whether it's automated or anything it doesn't really matter I think self-attribution is kind of one small stepping stone where it's like how did you find us you can we have a last click attribution model as being the common thing where even Google's trying to

Force this down everyone's throat where it's like no it's the last click but the last click is blind because when people go and type in Enterprise DNA for example you're discovering that they came from Google but the reason why they might have come from Google's because they might have heard you on a podcast and they're like I gotta research them again so you're getting an exact match but you if you don't do that self-attribution you've lost the real plot of how did this work and maybe

it's your podcast that's actually driving the most value and it's really hard to give that proper attribution I I think you're actually onto something where you know I think the the way of the personalization and kind of cross-referencing with an attribution is a way of kind of blending things where we've got our data in a big box so that gives us our flat insights but I think when you just look at flat insights you're missing out on something else where for example if you just look

at all the products and services you can get a referral from well maybe the user uh went on a Blog and they clicked on the link but the sale really happened because they've already seen that with their friends like on Facebook and it's really hard to pull this data out but I think once you're able to get a personalization in place it's like I I think there's going to be you know lots of ways of iterating this and finding finding things that we just can't think

are possible today yeah well I I just think you ran through a perfect example of why I think there's so much that can be done that is just not being done right now you know and um you know that sort of point I made uh I made earlier but yeah I I'm a big believer that sort of like as we go down this road this road this road where so much of what we see and like uh see and read is like AI generated you know

it's just going to get more and more and more that personal recommendation recommendation from an affiliate that that personal uh review by by an influencer like you've got to think that that's going to become more valuable isn't it you know like are people truly going to buy because some generative AI generative AI um touch something out like from a Google search I don't think so you know it's not it's not going to be as valuable as like having um some going on some podcasts and and

talking about your value at you know having someone recommend how much it um helped improve their um their life or made them more money you know so so that that sort of um comes back to why I think you know as the the an affiliate program just in general and doing those relationships with with people who um are aligned to you and the good partners and and can really promote your product is is going to become more more important it is important now it's going to

become more important as we go forward and maybe uh companies will start paying attention to that as well rather than saying okay let's just uh throw everything on the wall and see what sticks what sticks yeah well you know I think I think yeah look I it's it's hard to know um before you do anything with what works or not I mean I personally I like I've done that in the past we've done a lot of everything um and we've just refined as uh as as

we've gone we've gone we've gone um but yeah no look I think I think you'll learn you learn you evolve you iterate uh and you know think things think the market changes you know things are things things in your in in in how you can you can you can um succeed as a business that they change over time and you've got to adjust and so yeah that's that's I guess my sort of doing it right now and you know it might change but that's that that's

from thinking about it quite deeply about how it affects us and and how we need to um position ourselves within within the new new environment uh Sam I want to thank you so much for doing this doing this doing this um I I'm pretty excited about uh looking at the homework I I'm gonna do this summer of just basically spending more time uh taking data courses so I've already signed up I want to pass it back to you and just say um how can people get

find you or get a hold of you and just uh one more plug to talk about Enterprise DNA yeah sure so I mean you can find me on um LinkedIn Twitter just type in type in my name and um also you'll find me um within the Enterprise DNA um platform on our community Forum um yeah I'll be creating a lot of YouTube videos a lot of courses on our on our platform as well so it's just Enterprise dna.com and um yeah I'm Keen to Keen to

get you in the mix the mix the mix um and uh adding and adding value of if this is the um the space and the in the area that you want to focus your time big time uh thank you so much and I'm going to put all the those uh details in the show notes thank you so much thanks Sean thanks Sean thank you for tuning in to the affiliate bi podcast I'd like to take this time to ask for a small favor to leave a

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